Curing cancer, slimming mice, and making babies

Graham Knuttel: “sailors”

The brain of someone who drinks regularly adapts to better metabolize acetate, which the liver produces from ethanol.

Harvard researchers are performing real and fake gastric bypass surgeries on fat mice. And at least on mice, the surgery seems to have less effect than the change in intestinal flora it produces. We are not separate from the symbiotic microorganisms we carry.

Soon, doctors in Britain may usher into the world babies who have three genetic parents, the mother’s nuclear DNA transferred to a donor egg prior to in vitro fertilization, thus curing inherited mitochondrial diseases. We are products of biology.

Researchers at Sloan-Kettering have cured a group of patients suffering acute lymphoblastic leukaemia by genetically engineering their T-cells to target their cancer. Let’s hope this works on other cancers.

Now, to refuel my brain.